


viii. where did everybody go?

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dead character comes back as a ghost so they're not REALLY gone, Gen, Ghosts, Pre-Canon, Whump, Whumptober, unfortunate childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26899681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: Klaus is pretty sure that one of his siblings is dead.And then he sees their ghost.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 32
Kudos: 291





	viii. where did everybody go?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: "Don't Say Goodbye" | Abandoned | Isolation
> 
> this fic came from a prompt by anxiousturtel on tumblr. idk which of the official prompts it actually uses lmao

Klaus was thirteen and dreaming.

The dream was a familiar one: a stage, a crowd, a beam of light on him, Klaus Hargreeves: international rock star. In the dream, he played guitar and belted out the lyrics to a song he couldn’t recognise but knew off by heart; he was the lead man, the star of the show. You’d think Number Four would be relegated to keyboard player or drums – but this Four was the frontman; charismatic, energic, the singer everyone in the world wanted to meet.

His school uniform was artfully ripped and destroyed, his fingernails painted black and eyes surrounded with eyeliner. Somewhere behind him were his siblings, each on an instrument, his back-up band. They were there, their numbers painted on their clothes just like the giant ‘4’ smeared across Klaus’ white shirt, but the audience wasn’t there for the others. Not for One, in the back, or Two, on drums. Three on bass, Five gloomily snapping his fingers as a back-up singer, Six on the rhythms guitar.

The audience was here for _Klaus._

And then they vanished.

Klaus shut his eyes to belt out the chorus and the music stopped abruptly, the crowd vanished on the other side of his eyelids, and when he looked again, he was alone on a stage. His guitar was gone, his microphone too.

Klaus took a step. “Where did everybody go?”

The auditorium seats were empty, silent. The lights had all come up, no one single spotlight any more, revealing everything to be mundane, _him_ to be mundane. A lone black umbrella sat in the aisle, forgotten.

“Klaus?”

He span, finding Vanya. Seven. The one member of The Umbrella Academy who hadn’t come on stage with them. She wasn’t much of a singer, and her violin didn’t really have a place in Klaus’ rock band. She was their roadie, in her neat school uniform, not destroyed like the real stars of the show’s.

She asked again, “Klaus?”

“Yeah, V?” He sighed. Klaus was aware, somewhere in his mind, that this was strange – but it was all part of the dream. The world could turn upside-down and he wouldn’t realise how odd it was until he woke up.

“Where did everybody go?”

She’d repeated his own question and he shrugged, spinning and thrusting his arms out wide to look back at his empty, hollow auditorium.

“Not sure, V,” he replied. “Why are you on stage?”

“You called me here.”

He scoffed. “No, I didn’t.” Klaus turned back to her; the furrow between her brows, the way her fists clenched around the fabric of her skirt. _Anxiety,_ something told him, like a faint memory. She took those pills for her anxiety, though Klaus thought they made her more anxious than when she wasn’t on them. He thought she needed to take something that would _really_ mellow her out.

Vanya looked around the empty stage. The instruments had vanished with their musicians.

“Are you going to send me away?” she asked, her voice sounding as if she cared about the answer.

“Send you where?”

“To the other side, of course.”

Klaus frowned. _The other side?_ “What does that mean— _oh, shit._ ”

Klaus’ eyes flashed open as he woke up, the words falling out of his mouth in a shout: “Oh, shit!” He sprung out of bed, tangled his foot in his sheets and tumbled onto the ground. He scrambled back up, flying through the darkness of the middle of the night and flinging open his bedroom door.

“Number Seven!” he called. “Vanya!”

Skidding down the hall, he stopped outside her door, forgoing the knock and barging straight in. He halted immediately; her bed was empty.

“Vanya!” he called again, and this time stumbled back out into the hallway. He ran to the bathroom, empty and dark, and then down the hall of the children’s corridor to the stairs that zig-zagged down to the lower levels. “Seven! Are you alright? Where are you?” Klaus hung over the edge of the railing, peering into the darkness, but Vanya didn’t call back.

He had the worst feeling.

It was more than a feeling. It was a knowing. A surety; a certainty.

“What are you yelling about, Klaus?” muttered a voice behind him, and Klaus span to find Five standing in the hall, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Other doors were open, too; Diego peering around his door frame and Ben frowning, his sheets wrapped around him like a cloak.

“Vanya’s in trouble,” Klaus said. “I have to find her.”

Diego sighed and Ben collapsed against his door frame.

“What possible trouble could Vanya get into?” Ben asked, his voice clouded with sleep.

Klaus didn’t reply, yelling her name down the stairs again, before Five marched over.

“She’s not in her room?”

“Or the bathroom,” Klaus replied.

“How sure are you that she’s in trouble?”

“I’m definite.”

Five nodded once, grim. “I’ll check Dad’s wing, you head down to the kitchen. Ben!” Ben jerked upright at Five’s bark. “Check the living rooms. Diego?”

“Count me out,” Diego yawned.

“No, you’re _in_ ,” Five hissed. “Check the attic.” He vanished in a flash of blue light, not to be argued with, and Klaus didn’t wait to look at his brothers; he just clambered down the stairs, yelling Vanya’s name as he went. Surely, he’d wake up Dad – but he could deal with the old bastard. Though Klaus’ powers were strange and unknowable things, there was a sense of definitiveness he often had about things, about _this._

The bad thing. The dead thing.

Why were they looking for her if he was so sure that she was dead?

Klaus thundered down the staircase, racing past a questioning Pogo and all the way down to the kitchen, mournfully dark and empty.

“Vanya? You in here?” Klaus called. “This isn’t funny, Vanya! I need to see you!”

“Klaus!”

Klaus span, relief flooding into his body. Vanya, in her pyjamas, stood in the kitchen doorway. He’d been wrong. He’d been _wrong._

“Oh, thank God,” he sighed. He and Vanya had never been close but he’d never wanted her to _die._ He’d never wanted bad things to happen to her – she was just different, was all. Powerless and small. She needed protecting, and that protection came from keeping her separate from The Umbrella Academy. “Vanya, I was so worried about you.”

He stepped over, swinging his arms around her shoulder to pull her into his side—

And his arm phased straight through her.

She just stared at him, unsurprised.

Klaus couldn’t breathe; tried to inhale and found his throat clogged with panic. He tried again to hold her, to bring her in for a hug.

“Klaus,” the ghost of Vanya said, and Klaus vomited right there on the kitchen floor. The mess splattered across the tiles, over his bare feet, and he retched, digging his fingers into his knees until they ached.

“Klaus,” Pogo’s weary voice said. “Are you alright?” He stepped right through the place where Vanya stood, and she moved aside, her body shivering into vision again.

“Where is she?” he asked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“Where is who, Klaus?”

“Where is Vanya, Pogo?!” he yelled.

“I’m right here, Klaus,” Vanya said, sweet and simple, and he let out a sob that rolled through his whole body.

“Pogo, what did he do to her?”

He didn’t know what the words meant when he said them, but by the time they were out he understood them perfectly: what had Reginald Hargreeves done with his baby sister?

He shoved Pogo to the side and stormed out of the kitchen, yelling, “FIVE! BEN!”

Five appeared behind the sofa and grimaced at the sight of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

He shook his head. “Where’s Dad?”

“I thought we were looking for Vanya.”

“I found her.”

Five’s face relaxed. Klaus felt a stab in his gut. “Where is she?”

Klaus waved a pointing hand behind him, to where Vanya trailed behind. She didn’t seem distressed at all about her new state of existence and that burned somehow, maybe more so than if she had appeared before him bloody and hurt.

Five frowned, looking past Klaus. “What are you pointing at? I don’t see her.”

“Exactly,” he heaved, as Ben came into view above them on the mezzanine. “ _You_ can’t see her.” He spat out the remaining sick in his mouth. He didn’t care about how it hit the hard wood floors. Klaus just watched understanding dawn on Five’s face before it morphed into panic, and hurt, and anger. He circled every stage of grief but skidded to a stop before he hit acceptance.

Five vanished from the spot.

It wasn’t long before everyone in the house was up. Luther and Allison joined Ben on the mezzanine and Diego appeared from the stairwell, still yawning, apparently having not searched all that hard for Vanya in the first place. Mom showed up too, though she was supposed to be charging, and looked down from her charging point by the paintings to ask what the matter was. Then there was Pogo, standing behind him by the kitchen, and finally, Reginald Hargreeves himself, storming into the room, yelling, “Number Four! You better have an excellent reason for being out of bed at such a late hour!”

“Vanya’s dead,” Klaus said.

Allison gasped and Diego swore and Mom froze in place, her smile hard and suddenly unfriendly. Dad stared at Klaus; he was still wearing his suit, his cane in his hand. It was the early hours of the morning and he hadn’t gone to bed yet.

For a moment, no one spoke, and then Klaus hissed, “What did you do to her?”

“Number Four,” Dad replied, “I take great offence that you would blame this occurrence on me.” He looked around at his audience, all inhabitants of the house bar Five and Seven, and sighed. “Alas, it is true. Your sister Number Seven passed away tonight.”

Allison let out a sob and Ben’s face squeezed in a way that told Klaus he might cry. Klaus himself, however, just stared at his father, at his cold eyes and apathetic face.

“I was going to inform you all in the morning,” he continued, “but as it seems Number Four has become aware of her death, it only seems right to explain now. When you were all very young, Number Seven grew very sick and had to be quarantined for a time. She has taken medication ever since—”

“For _anxiety,_ ” Klaus spat.

“Yes, for her anxiety,” Dad replied. He didn’t even scold Klaus for interrupting. “Recently, she has been complaining of painful headaches. Tonight, Number Seven suffered a fatal aneurism. I believe it to be a result of the prolonged medication and her childhood illness, among other factors, though we will find out in the coroner’s report in a few days, I’m sure.”

Klaus felt a creeping sensation up his spine and turned to look at Vanya, in her pyjamas and peering at him. She didn’t look hurt, or bloodied, as ghosts often did.

She said, “My head’s been feeling bad lately.”

Klaus gritted his teeth tight.

“You can see her, I assume,” Dad said. Klaus didn’t look away from Vanya, short and tiny and dead. “Very well. I believe it is high time you all return to bed. I understand that it is unfortunate that we have lost Number Seven, but that does not mean you should lose sleep. We will discuss arrangements in the morning.”

He looked across everyone’s faces; the distraught expressions, the silent tears, the hollow eyes. “Do pass along the message to Number Five,” he said. “I do not _wish_ to punish him if he stays out of bed, but I will if I must.”

“Where’s her body?” Ben asked, and Klaus was suddenly grateful that he did.

Reginald sighed and gestured a hand. “Number Seven has been removed from her bedroom for the time being.” He didn’t answer the question, but headed for the door anyway.

“My name is Vanya,” the ghost of Vanya whispered.

“Her name is Vanya,” Klaus repeated.

Reginald paused and glanced back over his shoulder at Klaus. He did not say a word and walked into the darkness. The moment he was gone, Allison’s sobs became louder and Luther pulled her into an embrace, Diego flopped heavily against the wall and Ben slumped onto the sofa, his cheeks wet.

Klaus stared at his dead sister. He reached out his hand for hers and watched it pass straight through.

He whispered, “Are you scared?”

She replied, “I’m always scared,” and that was why she didn’t move on. Klaus would just have to get used to Vanya’s ghost haunting him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!! please talk to me in the comments!!
> 
> this fic will continue on day 11, you can be notified about that being posted by subscribing to either the whumptober series or the "ghosts" mini series
> 
> tomorrow: ben hargreeves dies


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